After leaving Cusco we travelled, in our terms, quite quickly. That is to say that we went from south to north Peru in a matter of a few weeks (although this is actually deemed quite leisurely when compared to many travellers who manage to take entire countries in a week!).
Our first stop was Arequipa which, as some may know, was the end of my career in the Army after a relatively minor kayaking incident in 2004. To be honest, the city hasn't changed too much since then. It's a little busier and a tad more expensive but I found that I recognised a surprising amount. Our overnight bus from Cusco to here was pretty uneventful and we arrived early enough to wake up the receptionist at the hostel. As soon as we got there we booked a 3 day 2 night trek to the Colca canyon, the 2nd deepest canyon in the world, on the recommendation of several travellers. My only concern with the trek was that, yet again, we had an early start the next morning, this time it was 3am!
We should have known that 3am actually meant closer to 4am but, like the naive gringos we all were, we sat waiting for our pickup for about an hour in the dark. On the plus side, when it finally arrived we were given blankets and pillows and told to get our heads down as we wouldn't be anywhere of any note for another 3 hours or so. Which is exactly what we all did.
Our first stop was the famous 'condor mirador'. I say famous, I had never heard of it but by the amount of people that were standing at this view point I can see that some people must know about it. It is apparently the best spot to see condors, the second largest bird in the world, and there were literally coach loads of people with their massive zoom cameras and tripods camped up hoping to see one. As Gen and I have already seen our fair share of condors down in Patagonia we decided to sit down and huddle together to try and stay warm as we were up pretty high. I felt pretty sorry for the crowd that morning as most coaches just stop at this spot for half an hour or so and this time there were no condors in sight.
The next time we got off the bus was the last time we'd see it for 3 days. We set off on our trek with our guide Louis and our small team of 11 trekkers. We walked down about 3 hours into the base of the canyon to a bridge at the bottom crossing the aptly named river colca. The canyon itself was awe inspiring, with it's sheer cliff faces towering above and the raging white waters below, it was a joy to walk down into. We even saw a condor flying close by. We took a break by the bridge to enjoy the ice coldness of the river as deep down in the canyon the temperature had risen to well over 35 degrees. Unfortunately to get to the river you had to walk over some rather unstable rocks and a german member of our group took a nasty fall and landed on her face. This was the end of her and her partners trek and they ended up having to take a mule back up to get some much needed dental care.
Following a very nice lunch we had just an hours easy walk with a 20 minute climb until we got to our first nights accommodation. It was a hostel run by our guides uncle and was very comfy indeed. His family had lived there for years and were very friendly and wonderfully accommodating. It was over run by animals including around 20 guinea pigs that ran around in their kitchen. These were not there as pets and there proximity to the stove was not an accident!
We had an excellent nights sleep here and were treated to some tasty pancakes for breakfast at the very amiable time of 9am. It was at this point that Louis decided to tell us what was in store for that day. As it turned out, calling this a 3 day trek was slightly false advertising. On the 2 day trip you trek for around 8 hours both days. So far we had done 4 hours on the first day and had a 2 hour flat walk on the second, before we reached an oasis where we would stay the night. The walk took us a little longer than 2 hours as we stopped to have some chicha, a home made alcoholic maize drink, lovely.
While waiting for our lunch to be served we enjoyed the sun by sitting next to a beautiful swimming pool surrounded by fountains and palm trees! This was by far the easiest, most luxurious trek we have ever done. The afternoon was spent lounging in the sun before it went behind the canyon and made everyone pretty chilly at around 4pm. To keep ourselves warm we had a game of volleyball, only to find that our guide was tremendously competitive to the point of cheating to ensure his side won! The whole day was very enjoyable and washed down with a few beers before bed, knowing that on our third and final day there was actually some trekking involved.
We had to start at 5am as we had about 3hours walking steeply up out of the canyon. To try and do this when the sun is up and heating the canyon would, at the very least, double that time. The first 30 minutes were done in the dark with head torches on as one big group. As soon as it was light enough our group split so that everyone could go a their own pace. We had a group of about 5 of us who took it pretty slow and steady with plenty of stops to take in the amazing scenery which was unfolding as the sun got steadily higher. It took us around 2 and a half hours to hit the the top and we were all very happy to be then served a breakfast of scrambled eggs and bread followed by an hour or so soaking in some hot pools.
I can see why so many people recommended we do the 3 day trek instead of the 2, as not only was it incredibly easy but it also gave you much more time to enjoy the beauty of the canyon. To finish off an excellent trip, Gen and I went to a restaurant that served extremely tasty pizza with a glass of red for the princely sum of £3 each.
Our next stop was a small oasis in the desert near Ica, called Huacachina. This was another place I had visited 8 years ago and I only remember three things about it from then. One, you could have a great time sand boarding, two, I had an unfortunate sand boarding incident, and three, we lost our friend Mole for 2 days there! I was rather hoping that this time only one of those would happen. Fortunately everything went smoothly for our flying visit to this initially beautiful looking oasis. I say initially as when you look closer at the desert outskirts the amount of litter that is strewn everywhere is quite horrifying.
We arrived there in the morning and spent the day wandering round the lake at the centre of this tiny town soaking up the sunshine. At 4 o'clock in the afternoon it was time to get the dune buggy for 2 hours of desert fun! We were thrashed up and down some huge dunes by our crazy Peruvian driver. Every now and then he stopped so we could get out and either take photos or lie on our sand boards to zoom down the nearest slopes. A few people tried standing up but the boards were heavy and the sand was slow so it wasn't half as much fun as speeding straight down the slope head first. I had to give Gen a push at the start of each slope to get her going, as if I had gone down before her she may still be up there now! Our last slope was the biggest and was an exhilarating rush all the way down. 5 from our 6 strong team sped to the bottom and we were about to head to the buggy to watch the sunset when we realised that the girlfriend of one of the guys was still siting at the top. It took over 15 minutes to coax her down and even then he had walk most of the way up and carry her board down for her! Safe to say we missed the sunset but I've lost count of how many beautiful sunsets we have seen on our trip so no one really minded and she was more than embarrassed about the whole saga. We found a very tasty veggie restaurant right next to our hostel that night to celebrate Gen making it down all those dunes. Falafely good times!
We left the very next morning to head straight to Mancora in northern Peru, missing out Lima as we knew we had to be back there to fly home. This did mean a 26 hour bus ride but we did it with a company called Cruz del Sur, by far the best buses in the continent. The only down side was that one of the many films they played was Ghost, dubbed in Spanish with english subtitles. This doesn't sound so bad but the subtitles were of the directors commentary, and I read every single word of them. It's the first time I have ever watched that film, and most definitely the last.
Without any problems we arrived in the small beach town of Mancora and took one of the thousands of tuc-tuc's to our hostel , Kokopelli, which was awesome. It had a good breakfast, a big pool, brilliant rooms, friendly staff, a great bar with good food and it was a 2 minute walk to a very nice beach. The next four days were bliss. We spent our mornings by the pool and the afternoons at the beach. Sometimes, if we were feeling particularly adventurous, we even did it the other way round.
We were there on Saturday the 26th May. A memorable day indeed. It was the day that the Harlequins won their first ever premiership final, and I wasn't there to watch them. It was the first final that I had not been to Twickenham for, the first one (of many) that they have been in and it was with a twinge of disappointment that not only could I not be there but it was not playing on any of the Peruvian cable tv channels available in the entire town, so I had to listen to it on the radio while watching the text updates on the Internet! But I didn't mind as due to the time difference it started at 9am which was exactly the time the bar opened, a very good day all round. I'll be there when they win it next year.
We thoroughly enjoyed our 4 days relaxing and getting our tans back in Mancora and were sad to leave, but the end of our trip is nearing and we have all of Ecuador to explore before then. We took a night bus across the border to get to Ecuador's second biggest city, Guayaquil. We almost didn't get the bus as the company we had got our tickets from had forgotten to reserve us seats. Fortunately there were 2 spare, nowhere near each other, but it did mean we got there on time.
I know I have alluded to this fact already in this blog but I feel duty bound to let you all know that the Quins have it in the bag.